Tag Archives: house

So yesterday I gave you a little glimpse into the sweet trio of prints that Uh Oh Pasghettio made for Emmett’s nursery, and today I want to tell you a little bit more about them and how you can win a collection of your own.

A childhood friend of mine, Amanda Bonaviri, is the art director and designer of these precious prints. Earlier this year she teamed up with marketing guru and friend, Kimberly Howard, to launch Uh Oh Pasghettio. I searched my photo albums high and low for an embarrassing picture of Amanda and I (preferably from that glorious period of time in elementary school when I actually sported a perm AND braces AND glasses at the same time…) but came up dry. So you’ll have to use your imagination. But it’s fair to say Amanda and I have been buddies for a long time and I’ve always, always been in awe of her fashion/style/design sense (Sidenote: She never had a bad-idea perm like me. Go figure.).

They even offer custom design. After working with Amanda on the prints for Emmett’s nursery I can assure you that she goes out of her way to tweak her art to make it perfect for YOU (I even sent her pictures of the nursery to match colors, and we discussed changing fonts/graphics), and that the final product is printed on gorgeous, thick, archival paper. Since I was hanging mine on a clothesline-type thing instead of putting it in a frame, this was particularly important.

Uh Oh Pasghettio just recently launched their Collections. Amanda uses her awesome eye for style to mix and match their colorful alphabet art and hand-drawn prints. They make it so easy to expertly decorate a nursery wall or playroom in just one click (and no one will ever know you didn’t curate them yourself)!

This map print is one of my all-time faves. Hidden away in the nursery? Pshhh. I want this one printed HUGE over my fireplace. I love the coordinating prints Amanda chose to go with it too.

And how sweet is this group of prints? The “playroom rules” crack me up.

Ok, ok, enough about how much I love all of the prints. Want to know how you can win a collection of your very own (or the best holiday gift ever for someone you love)?

You can get one entry for doing each of the following (up to 3 entries total):

Leave me a comment telling me if YOU rocked the perm/glasses/braces look like me when you were younger, or if you were the incredibly cool and fashionable friend like Amanda. Then check out Uh Oh Pasghettio’s website and tell me which collection you’d like to win.

Join Uh Oh Pasghettio’s mailing list to hear from them once in a while. I’ve been on the list for a few months now and have only received one or two emails (with coupon codes!), so don’t worry about getting spammed by them. LEAVE ME A COMMENT HERE TO LET ME KNOW YOU’VE DONE THAT.

Emmett is almost 5 months old, but I’m just getting around to sharing his nursery reveal now. (Looking back, apparently I did the same thing with Owen’s nursery). Now I guess it’s not so much a “reveal” as a “hey, my 2nd baby has a room”, but, I know some of you might want to see how it turned out.

The room itself is super small. We had a queen mattress on the floor in there before Emmett was here and there was barely enough room for anything else. So as Emmett grows we will likely have to switch his room with the playroom down the hall (much bigger), but for now, the tiny little room makes for a super sweet, cozy little nursery.

I love the warmth of the grey/brown walls, and the way the whites pop off of the saturated color. I used furniture we already had, and pieces of Owen’s crib bedding (that I had made for him) and used those colors as a jumping off point for the room. Even with a similar color scheme, it turned out so differently from Owen’s nursery.

I made the mobile (just like I did for Owen’s room), but this one was much simpler and I’m much happier with how it turned out. To anyone who wants to DIY, it was a really quick and easy project! I popped circles out of craft paper with my hole puncher and then just sewed them together in a straight light with my sewing machine. Then I tied the strings onto a painted embroidery hoop and hung with fishing wire.

My sister cut the letters out of wall vinyl for me and all I had to do was peel and stick.

The fox print was from a cute shop I found on Etsy (details below). The framed alphabet print above the changing table (from Fab.com) was actually a gift from Benjamin to me last Christmas. I think he had intended it for Owen’s big boy room that we were thinking about at the time, but as soon as I saw it I got all teary-eyed as I immediately saw the nursery for our Baby #2 come together. We didn’t even know if Emmett was a boy or a girl at that point, but the nursery would have been almost the same.

The 3 personalized prints that say “Be Bold. Be Bright. Be Emmett.” were made by a super talented friend of mine who is the creative director behind Uh Oh Pasghettio, a graphic design boutique that has adorable wall art and invitations perfect for nurseries/kids’ rooms. This trio is available as part of their “collections” (cute coordinating prints that look great together).

Uh Oh Pasghettio has offered to give away a whole collection to a lucky reader! You don’t want to miss it. Just in time for holiday gifting or brightening up your child’s room for the new year.

I have written before about how fire alarms are Owen’s biggest fear. For a kid who seems to have NO fear leaping off of climbing structures taller than my head or starting up a conversation with a complete stranger, it still baffles me that he completely flips over something as commonplace as a fire alarm. But hey. It’s loud. I get it. And I know the bone-shaking fear from hearing my own house alarm go off unexpectedly.

So in the middle of the night on Saturday, I knew exactly whose room I had to run to first when I heard our fire alarms blare.

I was out of bed and standing in the hallway before I even woke up fully. With my hand on Owen’s door, I waited for him to call for me before I busted in, while simultaneously trying to make sense of the alarms (I didn’t smell smoke or see fire and feverishly debated the likelihood of false alarm vs. real emergency).

A few seconds later Benjamin stood in our bedroom doorway. He had just gotten back from a trip at midnight that night and I hadn’t even seen him yet (despite the fact that we were sleeping next to each other when the alarm went off). I jumped out of bed without even remembering he was right beside me. In his grogginess he assumed it was our house alarm system going off, and said, “Can you run down and turn it off?”.

There were 2 things wrong with this statement:
1. I knew that it was the fire alarm and I couldn’t just turn it off. But when he asked me this, he completely confused me and I began to doubt myself. Also, I learned my lesson the last time our house alarm DID go off that I shouldn’t just run down and turn it off — what if there was an intruder in the house?!
2. I was frozen outside of Owen’s room. I literally couldn’t move my body to do anything other than gather my babies amidst the crazy loud beeping.

So I just stood there. Staring at him. With my mouth open, trying to figure out how to respond to him. Owen’s cry for me (a scream of sheer terror, as he realized his biggest fear was happening) snapped me out of it, and I completely ignored Benjamin’s question, ran into Owen’s room and scooped him up. He covered his ears and yelled, “GET ME OUT OF HERE. STOP THE BEEPING.”

I clutched him and ran down the stairs. As soon as I did, I realized the sound was much quieter. It was our upstairs alarms going off. They are all wired into the house but apparently they don’t all go off at the same time. Who knew. I opened the front door of the house and held Owen outside, assuming that Benjamin was, I don’t know, handling everything else? I couldn’t bring myself to put Owen down but I wanted to grab Emmett as well, and didn’t feel comfortable leaving Owen on our front porch alone. So I ran back upstairs still carrying Owen to Emmett’s room. As soon as I opened his door (he was totally fine, by the way, barely phased by the noise) I realized what had happened.

It was his humidifier. It had to be. It was the only thing that was different about that night as opposed to other nights. And the very same humidifier had set off the fire alarm in Owen’s room one time, a long LONG time ago (when he was tiny enough that the alarm didn’t even wake him). I told Benjamin what it was and he quickly ripped the fire alarm in Emmett’s room out of the ceiling.

Phew.

Silence.

Emmett cooed happily as he realized I was going to feed him since I was awake and he normally wakes around then anyway. Babies are easy. Owen shuffled back to bed rubbing his eyes and asking adorable and yet painfully sad questions like, “Is the alarm ever going to stop beeping?” and “The alarm only goes off when there is a fire… is there a fire? Are we going to get burned?”. And, finally, “Can I sleep in your bed?”.

Almost as soon as both boys were settled back in their beds, Owen cried out again. He SWORE up and down that he could still hear the beeping in his sleep. I rubbed his back and asked him if he could hear it right now. “Yes. It won’t stop”. The poor kid was so traumatized he could still hear the ringing and it was keeping him awake.

After two more night visits to his room to reassure him, he finally fell asleep. The last thing he said to me? “Can I tell all my friends at school about this tomorrow?”.

I love that kid.

And while I’m so relieved it wasn’t a real fire, I’m super annoyed that I can’t seem to use a humidifier in my kids’ bedrooms (Emmett’s room is TINY so maybe I just have to turn down the setting, but I’m not willing to test that theory by possibly making the alarm go off again). Has anyone else had this happen? Even in Owen’s room, which is much larger, I can only put it on half power.

It’s no secret that my lovely husband is good with a camera. As a result, we have an abundance of gorgeous photos of our family. However, they all have one thing in common: they don’t include Benjamin. I make a point to turn the camera around on him once in a while, and while I’m not half-bad as a photographer, I’m nowhere near a professional. And then, of course, the pictures are lacking another important member of our family (me!), so they are still not complete.

She came over a couple weeks ago to capture the beginning of our little family of 4.

I can’t even begin to pick my favorites. I love them all.

She captured that twinkle in Owen’s eye, and his nonstop rambunctiousness. I know firsthand how hard it is to catch this kid being STILL for even a second, which makes these images even more impressive.

Any attempts at a family photo were foiled (enhanced?) by Owen’s hilariousness. I must say, though, I love these even more than a “perfect” one with everyone looking at the camera and smiling at the same time. That’s our family, in a nutshell.

MY JOB
Yes, I’m still working. From home, these days, so I really can’t complain too much. I’m mentally and physically quite DONE with sitting in front of a computer, but every day I am more and more certain that I’ve completed everything I need to complete to be able to have a stress-free maternity leave. Well, free from work stress, at least. So although it’s annoying to still be on conference calls (and fielding all of the ridiculous “Haven’t you had that baby yet?” comments), it’s keeping me busy and it feels like I’m still accomplishing things, even though delivering a baby isn’t one of them.

As soon as we head to the hospital… I’m out!

THE BASEMENT RENOVATION
I haven’t given too many updates about our basement renovation but it is going really, really well. We “broke ground” right after Memorial Day and the project was estimated by our contractor to take 4 weeks. I know those estimates usually need to be cushioned by a few weeks, so I was expecting 5-6 weeks, which meant the job would finish about a week before my due date. We had one setback (completely our fault, not his) that made us lose about 1.5 weeks, so the fact that we’re finishing up early next week means that the contractor was actually right on with his timeline. That almost never happens!

Essentially, since we are taking up our guest room for the baby’s nursery, we wanted to add a bedroom and bathroom in the unfinished space in our basement (half of it is currently finished, and half is unfinished storage space, but it all has full height ceilings) so guests can come stay and have their own space. While this is nice for them, it’s REALLY nice for me, so I don’t have to worry about guests waking up my kids when they go to bed at night.

As an interior designer who missed her calling (or, rather, dropped out of design school when I realized I wasn’t going to make any money for the next decade while I studied architecture, and likely didn’t need that degree if I wanted to do this as a business later in life), I was in heaven picking out paint colors, carpet, tile, bathroom fixtures, etc. Remember this design tv show-esque weekend? Awesome.

And now we are nearly done. The plumber is down there today finishing up the toilet and shower and sink hook-ups, and all that’s left is a bit of painting and some carpet that’s going in on Saturday. Inspections early next week and then it’s ready for our first guest — my mom, who is going to come as soon as she gets the call that the baby is on his way! I am so thrilled I can barely contain myself.

I definitely thought we’d have a baby by now, but the last few days of watching all of this come together has been a wonderful distraction.

LABOR
Oh, friends. So many “signs of labor” going on, I honestly can’t believe we’re not in the hospital yet. I had a midwife appointment on Wednesday and she confirmed that I’m now up to 3cm dilated and 75% effaced. She stripped my membranes for good measure (even though she doesn’t usually do that until 40 weeks and I was just over 39 weeks).

A few hours before my appointment I started having some pretty serious contractions that were coming every 10 minutes from 1pm until about 9pm. I thought maybe the membrane-stripping had been at the PERFECT time and would tip the scale and send me into active labor, but alas, when I got in bed at 10pm they were more like 20 minutes apart and not quite as regular. Another good night’s sleep (which is great, except that I was anxious to wake up in the hospital and not in my own bed). Thursday I had a similar experience of very regular (and pretty painful) contractions all afternoon, and then by bedtime, nothing. I guess I should be thankful that I’m getting the nights “off” to sleep, but I’d really rather things just get real and get moving.

Today, not so many contractions but some other, uhh, lovely symptoms, that I won’t go into detail about since friends and family are readers now :) Suffice to say, if you’ve been pregnant before, you’ve “lost” this as well. So that plus a lot of cramping gives me hope that maybe I won’t be going back to work on Tuesday, and maybe this baby WILL arrive before his due date after all. But we shall see.

So. Now the race is on. Which will be finished first… the baby or the renovation?

When I was pregnant with Owen I was nesting and decorating and futzing with the nursery from the day I found out I was pregnant. I went into overdrive when I found out he was a boy, and was “ready” (in the “house is ready” sense of that word) for him so early.

This time? This time I’m a mere 6 or 7 weeks from meeting the little guy and the nursery still looks mostly like a storage closet. Hey, the crib, changing table and glider are built and in the room, so if we HAD to bring the baby home tomorrow, all I’d have to do are put on the sheet and changing pad cover (which are already washed thankyouverymuch). So the necessities are there. But the cute stuff? The details that I love dreaming about? Well, for now they are still all in my head.

But while we haven’t had the time to start accessorizing the nursery or even pick up newborn diapers at the store, we HAVE found the time to embark on a huge nesting project outside of the nursery.

EXTREME NESTING: The uncontrollable urge to start a huge construction/renovation project on one’s home while pregnant. The completion date may or may not be dangerously close to the baby’s due date. The pregnant woman who conceived of the project may or may not be physically able to help in any way due to her huge and unwieldy belly.

Apparently it’s quite a common affliction for pregnant ladies, if my friends are any indication. I posted about our project on Facebook yesterday and countless friends responded with hilarious stories of their own extreme nesting — some good, and some miserable.

Despite the fact that our house is pretty new and has lots of space, the nursery is taking over the one real “guest room” space we had available. Since we’re expecting a lot of different family visits over this summer and in the coming years, we figured it was as good a time as any to renovate our already half-finished basement (aka Benjamin’s office) and add a guest room with bathroom. As good a time as any, that is, unless it overlaps with having a newborn at home. You know, that doesn’t sound so good at all.

Nevertheless, we broke ground on the project yesterday. The contractor took one look at the watermelon in my stomach and joked, “We better get going! That bomb’s gonna go off soon!”. Damn right, dude. Get to work.

He says 3-4 weeks, so I’m assuming 5 or 6. Which puts the completion date RIIIIIIGHT around the time I’m expecting to pop this baby out (based on the possibly false assumption that he’s going to come early like his big brother did). So everyone please cross your fingers that both of our timelines stay on course and there aren’t any surprises.

If you’ve kept up on the news about what went down in Boston last week, you know that Friday was a crazy end to an already crazy week. Though life felt relatively normal for us (we were not part of the lockdown or police searches), behind the “normal” exterior, everything was different. Owen’s school was closed on Friday while we were encouraged to stay in our house during the manhunt for the second bomber, and I struggled to catch headlines and stay up-to-date via my phone so Owen wasn’t hearing/seeing the coverage.

It was stressful. And exhausting. And the second Owen went to bed I was glued to the television. We were so relieved to hear the news of the bomber’s capture late Friday night, and I spent the rest of the weekend almost completely unplugged from all news/social media/email in a sort of backlash against the time I had spent pouring over media during the week.

On a MUCH lighter note, the switch to the big boy bed that I have written/obsessed about far too much happened last Thursday, amidst the craziness. The bed was delivered and assembled while he was at school. It worked out really well because we were able to get everything set up and have a “big reveal” when he got home. I knew it would either be a huge success or a total failure.

The verdict? Huge success.

So far (we’re on night 5 tonight), he has stayed in bed and called for me in the morning. A few early wakeups, mostly due to being excited about the bed and also the fact that my mom was visiting this weekend and he wanted to see her as soon as he woke up. I’m considering that a huge success since I was scared he’d be out of the bed on night 1 and not sleeping at all. So… big boy bed for the win!

The transition also meant that we moved the changing table and the crib into the new baby’s room, and it has gotten me REALLY excited that we’re actually going to have a little person to put into that room very soon. My mom helped me get out all of the boxes of tiny baby clothes and clean out things like swings and baby seats that have been in our attic/basement since we moved. It’s making our NEXT big transition feel a whole lot more real!

Fingers crossed that the big boy bed maintains its allure and Owen continues to believe he really can’t get out on his own. So far, so good.

Project: Big Boy Bed could have been as simple as mattress on the floor. But no, things are never that simple around here. Somehow my brain turned that simple change into a catalyst for making all kinds of bigger changes.

Here’s what I intended to buy:

Twin bed (Our crib converts to a toddler bed, but since we are planning to use that crib in July for the new baby, I didn’t think it made much sense to transition multiple times. Straight to the twin!)

Here’s what I kind of forgot we had to buy in addition to the things above:

Mattress

Box spring

Duvet cover

Duvet/comforter

Twin sheets (x2)

Waterproof mattress protector (x2)

And then those things made me think of something else…

Video monitor (We never got one when Owen was a baby, and I’m glad we didn’t because I would have obsessed over it… but now I want to see what he’s up to when that door is shut and he has no crib to confine him! We’ll likely get 2 cameras so we can watch both kiddos on the same screen.)

Dresser? (Currently Owen’s clothes are all in his changing table. He is very much potty trained at home, but still wears diapers for sleeping, so we also kind of need a place to change him. Unfortunately he loves to climb his current changing table like a little monkey, and even though it’s securely bolted to the wall, I think it will be better if we take it out of his room once he is let loose. Also, we’ll need it for the baby about a million times more often, so it makes sense to put in the nursery. Which means that… now we need a dresser too? Maybe with a changing pad on top?).

And then somehow my brain made the jump that since we’ll be moving the crib and changing table OUT of Owen’s room and INTO the new nursery, we’re eliminating what we have been using as a guest room. Of course we knew that was going to happen, but the actual date (next Thursday) of the bed coming really catapults these changes into reality.

So, naturally, I started meeting with contractors to possibly put a bathroom in our basement to create a guest suite away from children… before the baby comes. Ummm, yeah. Maybe not the best timing, but it certainly would be useful!

I’m trying to convince myself that most of the new things we’re buying for Owen’s room are balanced out by what we DON’T have to buy for the baby’s nursery. And they will also be used for years and years to come (my good, sturdy twin bed lasted me until college!), so we’re investing in solid pieces, rather than something flimsy as a placeholder for the “real deal” when he gets older. Still, this feels like a much bigger chunk of change (in all senses of the word) than I bargained for.

In general, I think most blog/website April Fool’s Day jokes are kind of lame. Once in a long time there’s one that makes me laugh out loud (this YouTube one was pretty funny), but usually they are so ridiculous that no one gets fooled, but instead are left rolling their eyes.

However, I giggled a little when Benjamin told me about an idea he had. You know how I’ve been shocked at how big I am already with this pregnancy as compared to how I was with Owen (which was still very big for a 1st baby bump)? He thought I could tell you all that we finally found out why: That I’m having twins!

Kinda funny, right?

…Bueller?

Ok, maybe not.

In other news, I have been quietly avoiding the topic of switching Owen into a big boy bed since introducing the idea back in February, but that is about to change. I’m resisting this transition for many reasons, but Owen not being ready for it is not one of them (they’re all MY issues, not his).

I’m worried about losing the control that I have when he is in his crib

I’m stressed about upsetting/changing our peaceful and happy routine that has been the same since he was about 4 months old

And although I love the person he is growing into, I don’t want to admit that he’s not a baby anymore

Still, if we ARE going to make this transition before Baby #2 comes, I’ve heard from many sources that we should do so at least 3 months before the baby arrives so that Owen doesn’t feel pushed out or like the baby “stole” the crib from him. Given that he’s already totally jazzed about the big boy bed and has been asking for it for weeks (months?), I don’t think we’re going to have that problem. In any case, it seems like now is about the right time, a little over 3 months before baby brother arrives.

Benjamin is gently encouraging me to just bite the freaking bullet and move on.

So… the bed is ordered. It’s being delivered on April 18th. I have 2 weeks to get over my reservations so Owen doesn’t sense my doubt (the kid senses everything). On the bright side, that also means I have 2 weeks to pick out the fun stuff like sheets and comforters to turn his nursery into a real, live big boy room.

I’m 99.9% sure this is going to be a total non-issue, despite my incessant blogging about it.

Let me start off by saying that I am crazy. I know I am crazy. I do not have to be thinking about this stuff so early, and there are probably lots more pressing things that should be on my To Do list. But hey. Everyone has their things that they love to do. That they love to go overboard on. For me, right now, it’s dreaming aimlessly about the baby.

NAMES
I hesitate to even say this because I know it’s not the case for most couples, but Benjamin and I are nearly 100% on the same page when it comes to baby names. Before we found out if Owen was a boy or girl, we had a boy name and a girl name (first and middle names) all picked out. No fighting, no convincing, no stress. We just… agreed.

We kept Owen’s name a secret until he was born, even from our families. I loved the idea of the surprise when we first introduced him to the world, and I hated the idea of anyone other than Benjamin talking to my stomach like it was a person. Ew. We definitely plan to do the same for this baby.

Last night we agreed on the new baby’s name. It feels so exciting to begin to think about him as a little person instead of just an idea. I wrote the name out a few times like a teenage girl practicing her signature if she married her high school boyfriend. Except in this case, I was thinking about possible things that could be wrong with it. Too long, too short, would people misspell it, do the initials spell anything strange, how does it look and sound with our last name, and on and on. Crazy. I know. Even though I did the same for Owen I did not realize until the day he was born that his first two initials are O.J. (Owen James). Yuck. Now I’m just banking on the fact that when he grows up, people won’t really talk about O.J. Simpson much!

While I am so, so, so excited for Owen to have a brother, thinking about names makes me feel a twinge of sadness that we may never get to use the girls’ names that we love so much. I guess we’ll just have to have a few more babies…

NURSERIES
Ah, the nursery. Yet another thing that I do not need to figure out immediately, but can’t stop thinking about. I remember having a yearning to plan Owen’s nursery when we found out he was a boy, and it was one of the most fun things we did to prepare for his arrival. Now that I’ve been through this baby thing once before, I know that you don’t really need things like matching bedding sets or even a crib in the early days, necessarily… but still, the process of creating a space just for this little baby is something that makes me so happy and builds the excitement for him to join us. So I’m going to do it anyway.

A while ago I started a Pinterest board with baby things I loved (after Owen was through this stage). This has become a great starting place for the new nursery plans. It’s fun to pin things that I like and then look at them all together and see that I already seem to have a design plan I’m drawn to, even though I hadn’t thought about it that way. So far it’s looking like gray and white with pops of orange. We’re reusing Owen’s crib and changing table (which I still adore) and perhaps even the rocking chair (though unfortunately I feel like the rocking chair was the only thing I picked “wrong” the first time around… it’s not terribly comfortable, which is incredibly important, especially if breastfeeding works out this time!). Any tips on choosing gliders, particularly for short people?

NESTING
The nursery planning is the beginning of the nesting I’m feeling, but yesterday I ventured up into our attic to find a book and saw the boxes of baby stuff I had put away after Owen was born. Now all I can think about is getting back up there to bring the boxes down and sort, wash, organize, etc. I know. I’m crazy.

Did you and your partner agree on names, or were you unsure until the baby was born? Was the nursery an important part of your “nesting” and prepping for the new arrival?